Statue of Queen Victoria

·         Cultural origin of subject: United Kingdom

      This statue was sculpted by Marshall Wood and erected on November 21, 1872 in Victoria Square, located in Montréal’s downtown core. It is dedicated to Queen Victoria who was the queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901 and Empress of India from 1876 to 1901. Her reign was marked by the development and expansion of the British Empire and a successful era of industrialization, which brought successful economic, technological, and social changes to the British Empire. The construction of her monument was made possible through a fundraising process organized by a committee of prominent Montreal Anglophones. It stands as a symbol of English power and imperialism in one of the major cultural and population centres of French Canada. Due to the fact that it occupies a particular public space with little historical or cultural significance to the city's Francophone population, the monument has been restored and moved around on many occasions with very little public interest or political contention in the matter, and consequently its attachment of English Canadian identity and British imperialism to this public square has avoided much of the scrutiny faced by other monuments in the city such as Nelson's Column.